The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 23, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

As Wilton Barnhardt's sharp novel of Southern mores, Lookaway, Lookaway gets released this week, it's time to remember a classic Southern novel, Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which we called "strange and powerful" (and perhaps incorrectly) "impossible to sell" when it was published in 1940. — August 26, 2013

KIRKUS REVIEW

A strange and powerful book, standing quite apart from anything I can recall. The scene is a small Southern mill town; the central figure is a mute, a quiet, tolerant man to whom four people turn to express their individual hopes and beliefs. His very silence endows him in their eyes with a godlike quality; his human fallibilities are shut within his silence. There is a Negro doctor, struggling for the elevation of his race; there is an agitator, trying to show the world the injustices of the capitalistic system; there is an appealing girl of twelve, whose gift for music is frustrated by poverty and ignorance. The close of the book is confessed defeat for all. Direct, uncompromising, a distinguished piece of writing whose very subject matter will make it almost impossible to sell.

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